Editors' Picks

Linda K. Sienkiewicz's debut novel, In the Context of Love, is a spell-bounding, layered story of a family's secrets from and assumptions about each other. Chapter One starts with the protagonist, Angelica, driving her two children, ten-year-old Michelle, and eight-year-old Jude, to the state penitentiary to visit their father. Social Services advised her it was important for them to see their dad. Angelica wants their children to be aware of the consequences one has to pay for breaking the law.
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Idaho author Julie Weston is back with another gripping page-turner in Basque Moon, her second Nellie Burns and Moonshine mystery. As with her first, the widely-praised Moonshadows, Basque Moon features a strong female character who may be naive about sticking her nose into places it doesn't belong, but is fearless (if stubborn); plus a challenging and realistic puzzle that sends the heroine on a transformative journey, a story that tackles difficult issues, and a setting so vivid it becomes a character.
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They Could Live With Themselves is a collection of eleven short stories set in the small town of Stark Run, Vermont. Each story is a complete narrative and a satisfying read. However, in reading each story sequentially, we are drawn into the community of Starks Run and the lives of the characters that inhabit it.
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When you are fourteen-years-old, how do you deal with an identity that is confusing and loss that is nearly inconceivable? If you are Tess in Nancy Bo Flood's middle grade novel, Soldier Sister, Fly Home, you talk to your Navajo grandparents, because your mom works at the hospital; and your dad is in Phoenix because he got a promotion at his computer company; and the white kids at the school in Flagstaff bully you because they see you as Indian, not Navajo or white; and your big sister, Gaby, is serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq.
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I first got to know a bit about Phyllis Edgerly Ring from her Facebook posts about fascinating synchronicities that happened when she was researching The Munich Girl: A Novel of the Legacies that Outlast War. To me, this book seems more real than a biography, telling truth from many facets, including from the inside. The author successfully weaves historical times, places, and figures with modern fictional characters we come to care about.
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Clara Lhee LaCroix has had her fair share of suffering.first her partner and then her baby. Amid hardship, Clara keeps busy as owner of Crossroads Ranch, the "biggest mustang training facility" that uses equine assisted psychotherapy (EAP) for those undergoing counseling. Adversity hits again when an accident involving one of the ranch's transporting trucks and a seventeen-year-old drunk driver (Andy Black Hawk) results in the death of Big Ben, her deceased partner's beloved horse.
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Review of the Month

True Stories at the Smoky View by Jill McCroskey Coupe

You've got to love a novel whose protagonist is an emotionally adrift art librarian turned kidnapper and detective. Stir together a literary mystery with a compelling setting, a liberal dash of humor, and a touching relationship and you get Jill McCroskey Coupe's debut novel, True Stories at the Smoky View.
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Reviewed by Paula Martinac
Paula Martinac is the author of three novels, including the Lambda Literary Award-winning Out of Time and the Lambda-nominated Home Movies, as well as a collection of short stories. Her historical novel-in-stories, The Ada Decades, a love story between two Southern women set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights era, will be published by Bywater Books in March 2017. She has also published three nonfiction books and numerous articles, essays and short stories, and has had plays produced in Pittsburgh, New York, and Washington, DC. She teaches creative writing to undergraduates at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Visit her website.
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Sarton Winners Announced

The Story Circle Network has announced the name of the 2014-2015 Sarton Women's Literary Award winner and finalists:

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American Women in Their Cultural/Historical Context

Browse through our listing of books by women about American women in their cultural and historical contexts. At Story Circle, we are passionate about women's stories and are grateful to the authors who bring these stories to us. The books on this list deserve to be read and appreciated. They are books that matter, about strong women who have played significant roles in all fields of human endeavor. (Special thanks to Susan Schoch, who compiled this list for us.)

Briefly Reviewed...

We receive more wonderful books than we can possibly review. Here is a selection of titles, briefly described, that represent the wide range of recently-published memoirs written by strong women who have been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale. Recommended!

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Ever since she learned to read, Barbara Heming has been a voracious reader. For her a snow day was a gift of time to journey into the worlds sandwiched between the covers of a book. She pursued a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature which opened doors into literature of other cultures. After moving to a remote canyon in northern New Mexico a few years ago, she turned her attention to her lifelong dream of writing fiction and has now completed a number of short stories and her first novel.
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